


interesting questions

by mazabm



Series: tools of rust messed me up [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Coping with Death, Gen, Post-episode: Tools of Rust Part 2, Spoilers for Tools of Rust, found family building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22430200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mazabm/pseuds/mazabm
Summary: Rita is in her 40s, the first time she sees a person die.Let's talk about it, shall we?
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko & Rita, Rita & Jet Sikuliaq
Series: tools of rust messed me up [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660018
Comments: 6
Kudos: 69





	interesting questions

Rita is in her 40s, the first time she sees a person die. 

It’s M’tendere, who breathes their last. 

Rita glances back in the Ruby 7, sees Jet holding his hand to their chest, pressing hard as if that will stop the blood, and there is a single tear on his face. 

The Ruby is quiet.

M’tendere sang and sang until they stopped, their chest going still and Rita couldn’t stop herself from gasping out quietly, felt as her eyes welled up with tears. Death is nothing like she’s seen on the screens. 

Over 20 years of working with cops and detectives (a cop, a detective), and she never had to see this, never had to see the _consequences_.

There is an argument to be had, about how many people she has hurt and how many people she has saved with her skills (hacking is not a victimless crime, she has taken from people and on this road, she will continue to take) and she can’t stop herself from thinking about it, can’t stop herself from running the calculations.

She’s not a mass murderer. Would she have been? If Jet had used the bomb to save their skin at the risk of all of those people? 

Juno called her a hero after she had hacked the Theia from his brain and heart, after he trusted her to do what was right even if it meant sacrificing himself. 

Right now, she doesn’t know what to call herself, _thief_ sitting like a dirty word on her brain. 

That bomb sitting in the Ruby’s console taunts her, echoes through her thoughts even once they’re back on the Carte Blanche and she is alone in her room, trying to pace her breathing. 

For the first time in a long time, Rita is _quiet_. 

“Do you have to kill to be a thief?” That repeats itself, digging itself into her chest and sitting there. Why did she ask that? Why did she have to know?

“Do you have to be useful to be good? Do you have to be finished?” 

She can’t do this, doesn’t want to think about the answer, think about M’tendere. But she thinks about M’tendere, thinks about M’tendere and what could have been, should have been.

“They’re a mass murderer!” Juno has yelled over the coms.

Like her and Jet didn’t already know, like Rita hadn’t watched the streams repeatedly to get some handle on who Jet Siquliak was, who M’tendere was.

Could they have been saved? Rita thinks, Could she have saved them? If she hadn’t frozen, hadn’t let Jet be the first one to act when Dark Matters came crashing down on them. 

“Do you know why I wanted _you_ , Rita?” Captain Buddy had asked her, on their trip (ice cream, she had said, everything a cover for the next con) “Because you are so capable of so much more, more than I know. The next generation of thieving is in people like you.”

“Do you have to kill to be a thief?” Should she have asked the Captain that? Would the woman have understood? Would she have given the right answer, an answer Rita is really seeking right now? 

“Do you have to kill to be a thief?” She had asked Jet, thinking about all the thieves she had ever watched on all on her streams, all the people they wiped away as collateral. Thinking about the people the man in front of her had killed, how it ate him up from the inside and she was just seeing what it left. 

“I don’t know. I am trying to find that out.” He had said. Jet, a man who had killed 15 people because he could, at the moment, wondering if he could save M’tendere, a person who built weapons because they could.

They couldn’t. But that didn’t answer their question. 

“Rita?” Captain Buddy says quietly, knocking on her door. “Can I speak to you?” 

Rita’s cheeks are wet, she is crying. The blood on Jet’s hand as he climbed back towards the front with her is clear on her mind. That quiet in Ruby is like the quiet of the room now and never, has Rita so badly wanted to be in Hyperion City, among the sound, on a planet, not in this quiet space, this void. 

This quiet, and she did not know how to fill it.

“Rita, darling?” Buddy calls again, a little louder. 

When Rita opens the door, The Captain is there and something in her face falls when she sees Rita, her expression breaks a little. Guilt? Flashes its way across her expression. 

She doesn’t expect a hug. Maybe she should have. 

“I am terribly sorry, my dear,” Buddy says into Rita’s hair. Buddy makes them all feel terribly young, despite only being maybe 10 years older than most of them, it’s something in her voice. “I never considered this outcome.”

Rita doesn’t respond, she doesn’t know how to. 

She watched a person die today. Maybe, somehow they could have saved them. They will never know.

She doesn’t ask Buddy the question. She doesn’t have to; she thinks she will know the answer, sooner than later.


End file.
